Fear and Trembling

Tim Challies posted the following prayer here . O God of Grace, You have imputed my sin to my substitute, and have imputed his righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe, decking me with jewels of holiness. But in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin; my penitential tears are so much impurity; my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin; my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness. I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness; I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace am always receiving change of raiment, for you always justify the ungodly; I am always going into the far country, and always returning home as a prodigal, always saying, “Father, forgive me,” and you are always bringing forth the best robe. Every morning let me wear it, every evening return in it, go out to the da...

Some internet debate opponents accuse me of circular reasoning . The statement I am accused of making goes like this: The Bible claims to be God’s Word so it is God’s Word. That is “begging the question,” where the conclusion is true only if the premise is true. However, the actual argument put forth by Christians is linear and logical. In bullet point form, it goes like this: • The Bible is good history ( The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell). • We can trust what the Bible says about Jesus because it is based on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4, 2 Peter 1:16, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Baukham). The lives of these eyewitnesses were radically changed by what they saw ( Jesus and the Victory of God by N, T,. Wright). • Jesus claimed to be God. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” and Jesus did not correct him (John 20:26-31). • Jesus worked miracles and proved Himself to be God (John 14: 9-11). •...

How do we know what we know? How do we know what is true? How do we evaluate one idea against another? How do we interpret the information our senses provide us? What do we see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Taste? These questions fascinate me. I first began to ask questions like this as I studied Human Factors Engineering (HFE) in graduate school. HFE is a branch of engineering that studies how a human being interacts with their environment, usually with respect to how we obtain information and how we perform work. We looked at basic types of mistakes that people make, the way we obtain information from our senses, the way we process that information, the way we decide to act, and the way we activate machine controls to act on that processed information. The field includes ergonomics , but it includes much more than that. One of the things we learned right off the bat was that the way we interact with our environment is a process. Think of a black box with arrows going into the left side fo...

Hawking and Mlodinow’s book The Grand Design  is fascinating. It is a look into theoretical physics that I appreciate. One comment on page 180 seems to be getting all of the press: “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to envoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” This problematic statement is seen as a major victory for atheism. But, I note the comment on page 181: “…perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes [the universe].” Note the reference to logic.  The abstract laws of logic shape the way all of us think. Take one for instance: the law of non-contradiction. It says that something can not be both A and Non-A at the same time, in the same relationship, and in the same sense. This law cannot be denied. To deny it is to affirm it. If you say, “The law of non-contra...

I checked a copy of The Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow out of the library yesterday. After all of the fuss around the internet and in the media, I had to have a look. (See articles here , here , here , and here . From what I have read on the subject so far, I have two basic questions for Hawking and his proponents. You have said that something comes from nothing. The cat is out of the bag. You have finally admitted your position. This is a violation of the most fundamental law of science: “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” Positing that the universe follows certain laws does not help because those laws describe the way the universe behaves. How do you have laws to describe what does not exist? What if we grant your argument? What if the universe came into being because it follows strict natural laws? Where did those laws come from? The best explanation for laws like that is design. The universe behaves in a predictable fashion because God designed it that way. It seems ...